Putting the brake on accelerated lung function decline in asthma

The focus of most asthma care is on symptom control and exacerbation (attack) prevention. This focus is needed; asthma is a very common disease, still leads to an unnecessarily high symptom burden and is a cause of preventable deaths [1, 2]. This negative impact occurs despite the recognition that asthma is a heterogeneous disease with various subtypes [3] requiring different treatment approaches [4], with the development of multiple new targeted therapies [5]. Although the identification of biomarkers to help predict exacerbations and understand the interactions between asthma, risk and comorbidities is a key research priority area [6], one of the major problems still affecting our ability to improve asthma outcomes is persuading patients to take potentially lifelong inhaled therapy when, at least for mild and moderate asthma, patients often feel well most of the time.

Source: European Respiratory Journal - February 14, 2018 Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Shaw, D. Tags: Asthma and allergy Editorials Source Type: research